We’ll Always Have Ridiculous Parisian Tourist Guides

Talk to a certain kind of Parisian, and you’ll find that he knows he lives in the best city in the world. Why shouldn’t he? No place is more beautiful: yellow light dancing on water; gamine women moving like Degas’s ballerinas; dignified men posing on benches like Rodin’s “Thinker”; and miracles of leavened puff pastry lining every block. (To say nothing of the wine, the cheese, or the bounty of the flying buttress.) It’s one of the most visited sites in the world, as the capital’s citoyens are well aware. Parisians have a right to be proud of their Gallic paradise. But pride makes them less than unceasingly accommodating when foreigners descend, their the-customer-is-always-right ethos jotted onto stolen hotel stationery and pulled, crumpled, out of Gucci bags and fanny packs.

With this in mind, the city’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry has partnered with its Regional Tourism Council to create a guide for the hospitality sector, “Do You Speak Touriste.” Economic recession is back upon France, and shopkeepers, hotel owners, and restaurateurs have little reason to perpetuate the stereotype of the snobby frog. The local government is trying to help, with tips on how to handle the swarms thronging the ville-lumière, who may not exclusively agree that the Parisian is always right.

The actual text of the guide, to a reader sensitive to political correctness, is a laundry list of pigeonholes, which might, upon browsing, induce a bugging out of the eyes—a shock at once of effrontery and recognition.

Some years ago, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek read national personality—in fact, “existential attitude”—into the place where we, well, shit. In his words: “The three basic types of toilet form an excremental correlative-counterpoint to the Lévi-Straussian triangle of cooking (the raw, the cooked and the rotten).” It’s worth extracurricular reading, if only to see the overlaps with “Do You Speak Touriste.”

Germans, as Zizek had told us, require consistency, clarity, precision, and cleanliness: they’re thorough examiners, you might say. For these grand Teutons, the guide reminds us, “the handshake is customary.” It illustrates their entry with a blond cartoon couple that seems to have found a beer garden beneath some lanterns by Notre Dame.

Italians, an impatient people, are family-oriented. They love amusement parks, and “will be very touched by a little attention given to their children.” They expect mastery of their tongue, and will be casual with you in adopting informal address.

The Spanish, romantics and late diners, ought to be reminded about opening and closing times. The Dutch are looking for what’s free, and appreciate “original suggestions” for shopping. The English will reference architectural settings, and they like being called by their first names. They’ve got a distinct need for fun. To the Belgians, hip cats looking for whatever’s new in town, manners matter—always make sure that your Belgian interlocutor actually speaks French—and so does “free wireless,” the guide reports between parentheses, and with some telling ellipses: those guys…

The guide notes that no one will spend less money in the capital than the non-Parisian French visitors. Its purview expands beyond Europe, too. Brazilians are warm and readily tactile. They plan their trips in advance, are comfortable with taxi service, and, like the Belgians, appreciate availability of wireless access. (Very modern, non?)

The American, Anglo-Saxon by national heritage, “does not hesitate to introduce himself by his first name.” Americans cross the Atlantic for the gardens and the parks and, as the illustration of a mixed-race couple would indicate, the Moulin Rouge, not to mention (it hardly bears saying) the food. But on their clock—in America, time is, of course, money, and dinner will come at 6 P.M. Americans “particularly appreciate Parisian refinement,” but when you tend to them, pay no mind to brusque and discrete French cultural codes: the guide stresses time and again “le full-service.” At no moment shall you forget American expectations: bespoke service, impeccable English, and anticipation of their needs “at every step of their stay.” “Alert,” the guide says, next to an urgent exclamation point encased in a pink triangle: Americans have to be assured about costs.

The Chinese, on the other hand, put luxury shopping above all. They’ll visit Versailles and sniff out designer brands anywhere they can. A simple smile and hello in their language will satisfy them just fine.

The Japanese, when in town, expect comfort, cleanliness, and excellence. They’ll take guided tours, bow in greeting as opposed to shaking hands, and they won’t complain—until they’re back in Japan (in the manner of certain Yelp reviewers). The guide warns that “they are in Paris in an unknown context, and strongly need to be reassured.”

How true this is. It’s easy to mock the broad boilerplates of “Do You Speak Touriste,” but there is something real to international expectation. Paris syndrome, or Pari shōkōgun in Japanese, is a genuine medical disorder (here’s a short documentary about it), named for the experience encountered by the unluckiest visitors to Paris, and caused by the difference between the fantasy of the meringue et macaron and the reality of the “No, I won’t heat up that goat-cheese sandwich.” Call it extreme culture shock. The phenomenon was first identified in 1986, by Dr. Hiroaki Ota, a Japanese psychiatrist working in France; it’s most likely to afflict female Japanese tourists in their thirties, who may have very little time off from work, and who may never before have travelled abroad. The physician Youcef Mahmoudia has described it as an excessively high heart rate that can cause dizziness, shortness of breath, and hallucinations. The Journal of the Nissei Hospital (Vol. 26, No. 2), records a “case of manic-depressive disorder who presented his symptoms, insomnia, fluctuation of mood, aggression, irritation and rise in sex drive, after having begun to stay in Paris … his fantasy and idealization of Paris, characteristic of Paris syndrome, played a great part in his abnormal behaviors searching for his lost youth and love affaire.” Manners aside, shopkeepers are rude, public transport smells, and the language barrier intimidates, as do the sheer number of monuments, historical and gastronomical. The crisis of pickpockets in the Louvre cannot help.

The Japanese embassy has a hotline to help those suffering from the disorder. Surely those on the other end of the line are versed, too, in Stendhal syndrome, named for the nineteenth-century Frenchman who was overwhelmed by the beauty in Florence: “I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty.… Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call ‘nerves.’ Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

Yearning in summertime to escape to somewhere glorious, maybe even Paris, we must remember that we bring ourselves with us.